Missed Opportunity By Obama

June 1, 2009 — Ron Chusid

When Barack Obama announced his reversal of George Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research I was wondering if Nancy Reagan would be invited. The political benefits of doing this were obvious. When she wasn’t invited I guessed that this might be because her health wouldn’t permit her to attend. From an interview in Vanity Fair it now looks like this was a missed opportunity for Obama:

She feels President Obama missed an opportunity when he did not invite her to the ceremony announcing his reversal of Bush’s policy on embryonic-stem-cell research. “I would have gone, and you know I don’t like to travel,” she tells Colacello. “Politically it would have been a good thing for him to do. Oh, well, nobody’s perfect. He called and thanked me for working on it. But he could have gotten more mileage out of it.”